General Care Discussion :: shell condition

[robind]

I'm a little worried about two things on my turtles shell. First up are all the white marks and what not. These only show up out of the water. I'm guessing it's just a product of her shell shedding, but just want to make sure other people's turts look like this too.

Second is the little white dot on her major left front scute. You can see it in the top right of the second picture, it's a little white circle. This is visible in the water.

Her behavior is totally okay. She eats like a pig and she's basking right now. Maybe she's been sleeping on the bottom of the tank a little more than usual, but no an alarming amount.

[BullDog]

When a turtle is shedding, you can often see metallic or gold looking spots on the shell when wet from trapped air. Does the spots you can see in the water look something like that?

As for the spot on her shell you can see out of the water, I know Frankie had a few of those when I got her. If they are not soft, and there is no smell coming off of them, I don't think you need to worry too much about them. I think they are sort of like a bruise or a scuff mark, kind of like how we get white spots on our nails when we bash them. Ralph had a similar spot on his nuchal scute when he ran full tilt into a brick on one of his outings. After a month or two, it disappeared.

[robind]

No, they're definitely not air trappings. And they're not really spots. It's more like roughness around the edges of the scutes. You can see a similar buildup in the parallel white streaks in the ripples on her shell, in the 1st picture.

As for the little white circle, I'm inclined to agree that it's a bruise as she's fallen out of the tank a couple of times (I've since fixed the escape route) and it appeared suddenly. I guess I'll just keep an eye on it.

[BullDog]

Ah, sorry, I misread your post. I see what you're talking about. The whiteness could be hard water build up. To be honest, I'm not sure, but Frankie has similar white marks. Has she been shedding normally? I ask, because her shell looks a lot like Frankie's when I got her a year ago, and she's still retaining the scutes. They've started to lift, but I've only found a couple little pieces so far. You can give her some foods high in vitamin E (sweet potato, apple peels, blueberry) to help her shed.

[robind]

Okay, thanks for the tip. I feed her pretty much exclusively the frozen aquatic turtle diet cubes you can get at petsmart. Sometimes reptomin/treat or live food for treats. I'll check the tds on my water. there are quiet a few discarded scutes on the bottom of her tank that I haven't bothered to pick up, and I cleaned out the tank less than a month ago so she's definitely shedding. Although now that I'm looking they seem to be mostly the smaller scutes from around the edge, not the larger central ones.

I'm thinking it might be related to the age of her uvb bulb. I bought it last February; it's coming up for a replacement. I think I'll replace it tomorrow since I've seen charts showing a huge reduction in uvb output over the span of a year from this particular brand of cfl uvb.